The Pitch

 Above is the PowerPoint which we displayed when pitching our idea for the package to our peers - we felt a visual element would engage them more, and also display the kind of theme we are trying to get across within our pitch. Throughout the pitch, there are also videos which we showed to the audience

We delivered the pitch to our peers within our Media Studies class, who are also working on their promotional package for their own horror movie. We decided to deliver the pitch in order to gain some insight into what others thought of our idea, and for our peers to give suggestions on what could be improved, in order to create the perfect promotional package.


TARGET AUDIENCE:

Our target audience is a female aged between 18 to 35; bright and intelligent, she is either in university or has graduated with a degree in a creative subject such as Media or Art. She is an ABC, career-orientated individual – she has a professional career in PR or journalism. She’s sociable, funny and instantly likeable, therefore it is no surprise she has a solid group of friends and is in a stable, long-term relationship with her boyfriend whom she enjoys watching horrors with. Due to her intelligence she enjoys watching films that test her mind, this is why our choice of sub-genre (psychological) would be her favourite. Our choice of sub-genre is perfect for our target audience because she will be able to watch it with the out come of being particularly scared as well as completely enjoying the plot as she feels she has to think deeply to be able to try and work out the end of the film as this is the type of person she is: she wouldn’t be able to sit back and watch the film without trying to work out what’s going to happen.         

SUB-GENRE:

Our choice of sub-genre is psychological. We have chosen this particular sub-genre of horror as it is one that all 3 of us thoroughly enjoy ourselves because it grabs our attention as we always find ourselves second guessing the end result of the film. We have found that it seems slasher and supernatural horror films always have a simplistic and an easy-to-guess story line whereas with a psychological it engages the audience and is always different. However, with slasher’s and supernatural horror films, the plot is always familiar for example a masked killer on a rampage or a supernatural force destroying an innocent person or family.

  

– as this clip of Scream killings shows, there are many typical conventions being portrayed, we see many teenagers getting killed by a masked killer, we see the ‘final girl’ and bloody brutal weapons being used – it is obviously a typical slasher with a typical storyline. Through watching these clips you can clearly recognise the typical convention of these particular sub-genres. Now we will watch a clip for a psychological horror and this will allow you to witness the mystery a psychological horror carries and compare with the previous two clips.



as you can see in this trailer for Gothika it is clearly a psychological horror; it is apparent that people believe that the character of Dr Miranda Grey is going crazy and the film and the trailer focus on her mind and what is happening inside of it. Throughout the trailer all that is spoken about is her mind – there is no masked killer or supernatural forces. We also see her become more and more dishevelled and anxious throughout the course of the trailer, which also signals that the film focuses on her mind.

THE STYLE OF OUR FILM:

Many different movies (not all horror!) have inspired our narrative, as you will be able to tell once we have read it out to you. Firstly, we thought amongst ourselves which narratives of different films have scared us the most; although it is not a horror and is more of a thriller, the movie One Hour Photo has inspired us the most due to it’s gripping and extremely scary narrative; it is about a man who becomes obsessed with a family who he often sees at his place of work.  



 
Our group believed that if this ever happened to us, we would be extremely scared – we wanted to make an extremely scary narrative for our horror movie yet for it to be clever; we want to focus more on the core narrative rather than focus on jumpy moments to scare the audience. Another inspiration for our narrative, was the movies The Uninvited and Orphan; the twists at the end of both of these psychological horrors really thrilled us and took us by surprise – we wanted our audience to have the same feeling when watching our movie, and therefore we added a twist within our narrative towards the end, like both The Uninvited and Orphan did.

THE NARRATIVE:

Characters

Mary-Anne – stalkee

Dennis – stalker

John – husband

Lizzie – daughter

Ethel – mother

It will be set in a suburban environment and the house is a stock location. Other locations used will include a graveyard, a petrol station.

Our film is about a man who stalks a woman who he appears to have no connection with.

-          We see a woman named Mary-Anne and her family living a happy life in a nice home as the equilibrium.

-          She finds out her mother is dead

-          At the funeral, a strange man named Dennis is seen stood afar from the funeral party; he is laughing and drinking alcohol from a bottle and appears to be happy that the womans mother has died

-          This angers  Mary-Anne and she approaches him in a frustrated state, asking who he is he then grabs her shoulders and says “YOU KNOW WHO I AM”

-          She thinks nothing of it but then weird things start happening to her and as the film progresses things get a lot more weirder and she feels as if she is being stalked. It drives her to the edge of lunacy and puts her relationship on the rocks.

-          Her husband goes missing and then she begins to question her sanity...

-          She is filling up petrol in her car, leaves it unlocked, gets back in and Dennis is hiding in the back seat he grabs her...